McAfee to acquire Skyhigh Networks

November 27, 2017

McAfee Stakeholders,

Nearly eight months ago, McAfee became one of the world’s largest pure-play cybersecurity companies. At that time, I committed to our customers, partners and employees that we would be a company focused on innovation and growth with a singular pledge of keeping the world safe from cyber threats. Today, we continue the journey by announcing that McAfee will acquire Skyhigh Networks, the worldwide leader in the cloud access security broker (CASB) market segment.

Skyhigh is an ideal complement to McAfee’s strategy—one focused on building and optimizing mission-critical cybersecurity environments for the future. Cloud security has historically been an afterthought of, or impediment to, cloud adoption. With customers’ most valuable asset, data, increasingly finding residence in the cloud, it’s time security move to the forefront. At the same time, security cannot hinder cloud adoption, as the transformation the cloud promises extends far beyond the corridors of IT to every facet of modern business.

Skyhigh had this prescience five years ago, when it distinguished itself as the first cybersecurity provider to launch what is now a burgeoning CASB category. They purpose-built a cloud platform for both frictionless experiences and coordinated control. They envision a world where the cloud is not only secure—but the most secure environment for business. Many of the world’s largest companies have put their confidence in Skyhigh. And, major industry analysts agree, positioning Skyhigh as a leader. Skyhigh earned these accolades by putting customers at the core of their business—a value shared by McAfee.

Indeed, McAfee and Skyhigh share more in common than values. We both aspire to make cybersecurity an accelerant to the limitless potential of our digital age. We both know that our employees are at the heart of everything we do. And, we both are committed to modernizing cybersecurity environments for the future.

McAfee is placing our bets on where we believe those environments are best modernized—where endpoint and cloud serve as the architectural control points linked by the security operations center with actionable threat intelligence, analytics and orchestration, and enabled by an open ecosystem. McAfee started its legacy in endpoint; Skyhigh in cloud. Each company is known as a leader in the category it helped create. And, upon this transaction close, both legacies will meet under one company, McAfee, to offer our mutual customers market-leading capabilities in the two control points that matter most.

For Skyhigh employees, I could not be more excited to welcome you. I have tremendous respect and admiration for your leader, Rajiv Gupta. He is a true pioneer and visionary. Skyhigh’s legacy will prosper as you join the more than 7,000 men and women of the McAfee family.

For McAfee employees, I promised you we would play to win. We remain committed to being our customers’ preferred cybersecurity partner. Thank you for helping us write the next chapter of our story and further our commitment to protecting our customers.

And, it promises to be an exciting chapter indeed. We hope to finalize the transaction shortly after completing certain regulatory approvals and satisfying customary closing conditions. Until then, it’s business-as-usual for both McAfee and Skyhigh. Once the deal closes, you can be confident that the combined force of these two companies will be a whole greater than the current sum of its parts—yet one more example that together truly is power. And our pledge to keep our customers, communities, governments and nations safe from cyberattacks will be stronger still.